Tuesday, March 14, 2017

An Unhealthy Plan From The GOP

The House Republicans released their replacement plan for Obamacare last week. It did not go well.

It was quickly condemned by Heritage Action and other conservative groups. Moderate Republicans, like Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, expressed skepticism. And AARP — perhaps the country’s most powerful lobbying group — was highly critical.

The proposal is a tangle of half measures, wishful thinking and accounting gimmicks that will not fix the problems of Obamacare (itself a tangle of half measures, wishful thinking and accounting gimmicks). Yet that is not the worst feature. Its greatest flaw is that it does not remedy the fundamental unfairness at the heart of American health care. In fact, it makes it worse.

Put aside the thorny ideological questions of whether the government should provide health care for everybody, or the extent to which the free market should be utilized. We can all agree that, insofar as the government does provide for care, it must do so in an impartial manner — based on neutral factors like need and ability to pay, not political clout.